Linda Hirshman — who, on top of thinking of herself as the matriarch of all women/feminists is responsible for making up the term “choice feminist” so she could have a convenient strawfeminist to attack — thinks she knows what’s causing division among feminists. And, unfortunately, what she sees isn’t people like her.
No, what Hirshman thinks is hurting feminism is any anti-oppression activism that acknowledges that gender is only one of the factors that affect women. Jill summarizes Hirshman’s argument as:
Linda seems to be arguing that feminism has lost focus by way of intersectionality — because we’re so busy looking at things like race and class, we’ve forgotten about women.
I can’t bring myself to quote Hirshman’s actual arguments because I feel like displaying such words from someone who calls herself, and is regarded as, a feminist would dirty this blog. If you can stomach long quotes full of racist, classist and other bigotry, Jill’s takedown is probably worth a read. I would say “definitely”, but I wasn’t able to read it myself because I got as far as the first paragraph of the first quote and had to leave the page. If you’re like me and can’t tackle this subject without the filter of someone else who has graciously read through the shit, I would highly recommend BfP’s post on the issue.
There are people trying so fucking hard to create a semblance of unity within a diverse movement and it’s people like her who get to be the well-known feminists. What. The. Fuck.
No, Ms. Hirshman. Just… no. Get off of my side because you’re making my side look like a bunch of bigots.
June 10th, 2008 at 9:26 am
This is the only time I’ve ever wanted to shout “Offsides, offsides!” at anybody. Her article nearly made my head asplode - and she probably still wonders why woc and others have split off from her brand of/mainstream feminism.
June 10th, 2008 at 9:37 am
There are people trying so fucking hard to create a semblance of unity within a diverse movement and it’s people like her who get to be the well-known feminists. What. The. Fuck.
No, Ms. Hirshman. Just… no. Get off of my side because you’re making my side look like a bunch of bigots.
Well said.
June 12th, 2008 at 7:50 am
“Linda seems to be arguing that feminism has lost focus by way of intersectionality — because we’re so busy looking at things like race and class, we’ve forgotten about women.”
And just….why anyone would ever think that arguing that was a good idea is beyond me.
#1 It’s not true
#2 It’s racist, bigoted, etc.
And if you are really so privileged that you can’t see either of those, you should at least be able to stumble across
#3 That is essentially the same argument that faux-progressives make about feminism in general.
Which should make the Linda’s of the world pause and think for a second even if nothing else does.
June 18th, 2008 at 5:33 am
[...] It’s not just all the casual ableism that hardly ever gets called out, or that feminists like Linda Hirshman get paid by well-known newspapers to revel in their privilege. It’s [...]
June 19th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Some feminists are bigots.
Some POC are sexist.
You take what you have to from the people on your “side” for one issue and don’t support them on the rest.
ie.
Linda Hirschman and I agree that women need to examine their “choices” and find out if they are indeed really our own or society’s choices pressured onto us.
But I don’t understand how she can’t see race as a feminist issue as well.